JOHN BARRY is Reader in Green Political Economy at the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, Queens University Belfast. His areas of research include green political economy and green economics; economic practices and sustainability, normative aspects of sustainable development; governance for sustainable development; the greening of citizenship and civic republicanism; green politics in Ireland, North and South; the Transition Movement; peak oil and climate change; the governance of science and innovation; the link between academic knowledge and political activism and policy making; trust, legitimacy and public policy; citizenship, public policy and governance; theories and practices of reconciliation in Northern Ireland. His books include, Rethinking Green Politics: Nature, Virtue and Progress (1999) - [winner of the Political Studies Association Mackenzie prize for best book published in political science] - Environment and Social Theory, 2nd edition, (2007); and Citizenship, Sustainability and Environmental Research: Q methodology and Local Exchange Trading Systems (2000). His co-edited books include The International Encyclopaedia of Environmental Politics (2001), Sustaining Liberal Democracy (2002); Europe, Globalisation and Sustainability (2004), The Nation-State and the Global Ecological Crisis (2005) and Contemporary Environmental Politics (2006). He latest book is The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing in a Climate-Changed, Carbon-Constrained World (2012, Oxford University Press). He is also a former co-leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland and is currently a Green Party Councillor on North Down Borough Council, Northern Ireland.

CRISTINA BELTRÁN is associate professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Currently, she is a Member in the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. A political theorist by training, she is the author of The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity (Oxford University Press, 2010). The Trouble with Unity won several awards, including the 2011 Ralph Bunche Award from of the American Political Science Association and Cuba’s Casa de la Américas prize for the best book on the subject of Latinos in the United States. Her work has appeared in Political Theory, Aztlán, Politics & Gender, Political Research Quarterly, the Du Bois Review, Contemporary Political Theory, and various edited volumes. Her current book project uses affect and aesthetic theory to analyze the politics of the Right, particularly the growing presence of Latino conservative organizations and leaders.

GEORGE LAKOFF is Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972. He previously taught at Harvard and the University of Michigan, and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. He spent over a decade as senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Berkeley, Calif. Professor Lakoff is a founder of the fields of Cognitive Science and Cognitive Linguistics. He has published hundreds of technical articles, as well as books on Linguistics, Politics, Psychology, Poetics, Philosophy, and Mathematics. He specializes in the study of the mind and language, and has published the following books in that area: Metaphors We Live By (with Mark Johnson); Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things; More than Cool Reason (with Mark Turner); Philosophy in the Flesh (with Mark Johnson); and Where Mathematics Comes From (with Rafael Núñez). He is also the country’s leading expert on the framing of political discourse. His books on politics include the best selling Don’t Think of an Elephant!; The Political Mind; Moral Politics; Thinking Points; and Whose Freedom? His current technical research is on the theory of how the neural circuitry of the brain gives rise to thought and language.

“A Critical History of Socio-Political Modernity: Foucault, Marx and the Project of Human Emancipation”

April 8, 2014, 4pm, Curti Lounge (Humanities Building, Room 5243)

Co-sponsored by the Havens Center, the University Lectures Committee, the Goldberg Center, the Geography Department, the Department of European Languages and Literature, the Department of History, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Research in the Humanities

JACQUES BIDET is Professor emeritus at the University of Paris-Nanterre. He is a reputed social theorist, philosopher and historian, who has done path-breaking work on both the origins and theory of modernity. Specifically, while many scholars focus on the idea of capitalism as being at the heart of modernity, Bidet theorizes modernity in terms of three layers, organization, market and a world system of nation-states. Through this more complex theorization, he is able to show both how the above structures and system reproduce hierarchies and domination and also how the ideas associated with these structures, such as equality and freedom, which are essential for the functioning of the market, make possible an oppositional politics with transformative potential.

ELIZABETH ANDERSON is John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she has taught since 1987. After earning a B.A. at Swarthmore College in 1981 (Philosophy major, Economics minor), she studied under John Rawls at Harvard University, graduating with a Ph.D. in 1987. A Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Professor Anderson was elected Vice-President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association in 2013. In 2011 she became inaugural Director of the Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, a program she created in collaboration with colleagues in Political Science and Economics. She is the author of Value in Ethics and Economics (Harvard UP, 1993), The Imperative of Integration (Princeton UP, 2010), and numerous articles, widely reprinted, in journals of philosophy, law, and economics. Her research ranges across several areas,including egalitarianism, democratic theory, antidiscrimination law, pragmatism, value theory, social epistemology, feminist epistemology and philosophy of science, critical race theory, and theories of rationality and social norms. She is currently working on a history of egalitarianism from the Levellers to the present.

Co-sponsored by Global Studies, the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign

THOMAS FERGUSON is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and taught formerly at MIT and the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money Driven Political Systems, and Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics (with Joel Rogers). His articles have appeared in many scholarly journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Economic History. He is Contributing Editor at AlterNet, Contributing Editor to The Nation, and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of the Historical Society and the International Journal of Political Economy. He is also Director of Research at the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a member of its Advisory Board.

DAVID MEGGYESY played linebacker for seven years with the St. Louis Cardinals, now the Arizona Cardinals. Meggyesy’s best-selling football autobiography, Out of Their League, was honored by Sports Illustrated as one of the best 100 sports books ever written. He has written articles for many publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune and Heartland Journal. During his NFL career, Meggyesy was actively involved in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements, and was co-founder of the Esalen Sports Center. Meggyesy served as western director of the national football league players association (NFLPA), the NFL players union, and is board president of athletes united for peace.

JOSH LERNER is Executive Director of the Participatory Budgeting Project, a non-profit organization that empowers communities across North America to decide how to spend public money. Josh completed a PhD in Politics at the New School for Social Research and a Masters in Planning from the University of Toronto. Since 2003, he has developed, researched, and worked with dozens of participatory programs in North America, Latin America, and Europe. He is the author of the book Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics (MIT Press), and his articles have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, The National Civic Review, YES! Magazine, Shelterforce, and the Journal of Public Deliberation.